The Present Condition of the Indian Archipelago. 363 



period wliich separates man, first awaking to a sense of new wants, 

 and setting out on his career of dissatisfaction and action, from man, 

 when civilisation has thrown off its early vices and evils, and is 

 bringing all human wants and desires into harmony. But we cannot, 

 if we would, arrest the march of events ; and as the necessities and 

 enterprise of China and Europe are yearly more and more invading 

 the recesses of the Archipelago, and the most secluded tribes must 

 in a short time be brought within the circle of general economical 

 intercourse, we must dismiss from our minds distrust and hesitation, 

 and substitute in their place the fact that this intercourse is now 

 most extensive, will soon be universal, and is a mighty agent for 

 good as well as for evil. 



Unfortunately the Chinese, who are so rapidly spreading, can only 

 corrupt and debase the natives. Living but for gain and merely 

 physical enjoyment, and pursuing these objects with a combination 

 of the most mature patience, laboriousness, duplicity, craft, and often 

 fraud, which is the more dangerous from the easy, open, plain, and 

 plausible manner with which it is accompanied, the Chinese flow 

 into every opening which European powers effect, whether by sup- 

 planting or weakening native governments. If every step which 

 European enterprise makes is thus followed by an accession of 

 Chinese corruption, it is the more incumbent on Europe that she no 

 longer stand aloof from the natives, and abandon them to the de- 

 basement of a civilisation, purely industrial and sensual, to which 

 she contributes to expose them. 



It is time that England should see and be shocked by the effects 

 of her past policy, or absence of policy, in the anarchy, degeneracy, 

 oppressions, and vices, which largely prevail in n.any parts of the 

 Archipelago. England would then learn by what a small effort, in 

 comparison with those which she is daily making for objects of far 

 inferior magnitude and moment, she might make herself known in 

 her true character in the Archipelago, and speedily free the slave 

 from his bonds ; suppress the trade in men, and its associate, piracy ; 

 mitigate and eventually abolish the heavy monopolies and restraints 

 which depress industry, and nourish oppression, fraud, and corrup- 

 tion : and, having thus given to the people freedom in person, pro- 

 perty, and mind, lead them, through her syinpathy and pity, and 

 their docility and gratitude, to a willing reception of the humanisino- 

 and elevating knowledge of Christendom. 



